Compressing a large and diverse catalog of long-form entertainment content, such as video content, for public consumption may pose challenges. One approach to compressing such content involves selecting a desired average or maximum bit rate for the content in the catalog, and then compressing each item in the catalog according to the selected bit rate. However, the compression of each content item may be affected by the visual complexity of the content item. For example, a more visually complex item may be more difficult to compress to a desired bit rate without unduly impacting playback quality. As a result, a content provider may choose to compress a catalog at a relatively high bit rate to ensure that a desired minimum playback quality is achieved across the catalog. This may utilize a potentially significant amount of data storage.